


It Had to be Done

by ScaryScarecrows



Series: Gaslights [18]
Category: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)
Genre: Bruce is just trying to understand what happened, look how well that goes, mentions of clown murder, the kids are not alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 08:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScaryScarecrows/pseuds/ScaryScarecrows
Summary: But then again, there’s a lot of things Tim wishes. He wishes his parents were still alive, sometimes. Wishes Jay wasn’t dead. Wishes, when he’s alone and doesn’t have to pretend to anyone, that they’d never met Bruce Wayne. So far, no genie-in-a-bottle has come to grant any of those.





	It Had to be Done

**Author's Note:**

> Or, Bruce is no fool. He knows what happened with the clown.

Tim has been in a fog for seven days, two hours, eight minutes and thirty-eight…thirty-nine…forty…seconds.

And counting.

The Joker has been dead and burnt for five days and counting. Well. Dead for seven. Arrangements had to be made. He hadn’t been…intact…enough for the medical students to take him, as they might have done otherwise, and Tim feels a little bad for that, but…but this way, he can’t come back.

He doesn’t remember very much of it. Trauma response, he thinks, like when his parents died, or Jay’s funeral. There’s just flashes-laughing, and garish colors, and a sudden **hucgh** when the laughter finally **stopped.** After that, there’s nothing. Next thing he remembers is Dove wrapping his fingers around a shot glass and saying, “I want you to take this. Straight down, right now.”

He’s not sure why. It was Penguin’s Good Vodka, the kind he gets imported straight from Russia and keeps locked up in his study. He remembers that. It didn’t taste like anything, but it must’ve done something because his memories get a lot clearer from that point on.

Except for the gaps. Dick’s worried, he knows, because sometimes he’ll blink and Dick will be **there** , cupping his face and saying his name. He’d worry more, but Dick has gaps like that, too, sometimes. He’ll just…he’ll get stuck, sort of, folding and unfolding and refolding say, a shirt. Over and over and over and over and over until Tim makes him stop.

It had to be done. This is just the price they pay for it.

They haven’t. They haven’t seen Bruce, since. Well. Not up close-two nights ago they caught a glimpse of him on a rooftop, just for a second before they scurried down an alley like rats and vanished into a crowd of drunken revelers. It had been somebody’s birthday.

It’s easier than you’d think, to avoid Bruce. At least, if you know where to go.

It’s worse, Tim thinks, to know that he’s a man under there. Jason used to tease him, Before, about the Bat bein’ some kinda **creature** that drank the blood of the guilty and bottled souls for some nefarious purpose. But now, knowing better, it’s…it’s **maddening** , to think that someone has the arrogance to believe that they can save a city. There’s a reason they don’t venture out of Old Gotham much now. You can save a scrap of humanity, maybe. No more than that. Try for more, and people slip through the cracks.

Besides, they’ve got contacts down there. Penguin’s crew’ll help them out sometimes-Charlie, especially, will sweep them up in a big bear hug before sending them to some place or other, and there’s always results for it.

Bruce is here. Bruce is here and Tim doesn’t know how long he’s **been** here. He’s just standing there, looking at them and he’s **angry** and **hurting** but.

But. He doesn’t have the right, not really.

“Boys.”

Dick huffs. Tim pretends he doesn’t notice him moving between himself and Bruce. Dick may not realize that he’s doing it, and it…it doesn’t matter anyway.

“What do you want.”

“What do you know about the Joker.”

Of course.

Tim doesn’t know, will never know, but he…he suspects. It was just such a coincidence that the clown had…of all the people to kidnap at random…

He was smarter than people would think, to look at him. It’s not at all out of the realm of possibility that he figured it out. And that…the last little lair they found, in some innocuous little apartment, it had been filled to the brim with… **things.** Clippings and drawings and nonsensical notes and even a handmade **doll**. Obsession is too light a word.

And it went both ways, in the end. Not to that degree, but it was there all the same.

“Three guesses, B,” Dick says lightly, and **there’s** that circus background-the show must go on. “First two don’t count.”

The anger just bleeds away, leaving bone-deep exhaustion and raw grief. Tim swallows the biting comment forming on his tongue, knows, deep down, that it’s unwarranted.

But it isn’t the same. Bruce took them in, yes, gave them a home, but their relationship…it’s dependent, there’s a power imbalance. What they had before was…different. They all ate or none of them did. They had to look after their own.

“Dick—”

“Come to drag us off to Arkham?” He wouldn’t. He might…he might try to lock them in the attic or something, but not Arkham.

Surely.

Bruce bristles and grows and Tim mentally reassess the situation. Just a little bit.

“What has gotten into you?”

“Honest question.” Dick shrugs, muscles moving smoother than a snake’s. “I’m sure you got to take a look before they lit him up.”

Dick is not helping things. Tim knows his game-rile their opponent, distract, make an opening for an attack from the side.

Or an escape.

“That’s enough,” he says softly, steps out and into a patch of lamplight. “He’s not sending us away. Are you?”

Bruce softens, as much as he ever does, and shakes his head.

“No, Tim. But neither of you are…you’re not **well**.”

Says the man who puts on bat ears and goes out at night to punch criminals in the face. Mister Pot, he’d like to introduce you to Mister Kettle.

“He wasn’t going to stop,” he says, wishes he’d grow more **now** so he wouldn’t have to strain to look Bruce in the eye. “He was never going to stop. So it doesn’t matter that he’s dead because now he won’t hurt anyone else!”

Bruce is still. Dick isn’t-he’s rolling his wrists, just a little. Just enough to dislodge the tiny blades he keeps in his sleeves, the ones that settle in between his fingers and give his punch that much more of a **bite**. They can cut through the cowl, with enough force behind them, can maybe even keep cutting down to the bone.

“Tim.” Bruce sounds…desperate. Lost. Tim can’t remember him ever sounding like that. “Tim, you need to calm down.”

He wishes Selina would have come. Selina might have understood. Or at least admitted that, _no, Kitten, I don’t get it, but why don’t you tell me, hrm?_

But then again, there’s a lot of things Tim wishes. He wishes his parents were still alive, sometimes. Wishes Jay wasn’t dead. Wishes, when he’s alone and doesn’t have to pretend to anyone, that they’d never met Bruce Wayne. So far, no genie-in-a-bottle has come to grant any of those.

Just like that, he’s nine again, in too-big clothes (that scarf they found, bigger than him, that his brothers used to insist he wear ‘cause ‘you’re fragile, a stiff breeze’ll kill ya’, he’d forgotten that-). And he’s in Penguin’s office, and the man’s not looking at him, not really, but he says, smooth and easy, “Wait until they’ve written you off, and strike **hard**.”

Jason pops up behind him, and this is a different memory bleeding in, but the advice is no less valid.

“You get one shot, Timmy,” he’s saying, giving nine-year-old Tim a little shove. “You make it a good one, or you’re fucked.”

They’re not going to Arkham. But they’re not going back to the Manor, either.

“You need to get the hell out of here,” Dick says in the here-and-now, and Tim, from where he is, sees him coiling up like a spring. “If you’re not going to try and take us in, then go.”

Bruce’s eyes narrow.

“You killed a man.”

“We killed a monster! He broke out of Arkham twice, it wasn’t working! You weren’t going to stop him, so we did!”

**“Dick—”**

And Dick **moves** , lunging forward with the knives shining in his knuckles. Bruce leaps back-

-but he’s not factoring in Tim. Tim, who’s rolling sideways to draw his staff and strike at that ankle that’s never quite healed since a horse-thief got a lucky hit last winter. It rolls and drops him, and then Dick’s grabbing Tim’s arm and sprinting for the edge of the roof. They’ve only got seconds.

They only need seconds. They can fall just fine, can vanish into the pub below, dimly lit and smoky and crowded.

He’s glad, he decides, that Selina didn’t come. She’d have taken Bruce’s side, and…and this way, he can pretend otherwise. Just a little bit.

THE END


End file.
